


turn the page

by closingdoors



Series: Pepperony Week 2018 [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Pepperony Week, Pepperony week 2018, Pre-Iron Man 1, Pre-Relationship, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 10:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: “So is she, like, a lesbian?”or, prompt six: soulmates





	turn the page

**Author's Note:**

> This one is short and not at all what you'd probably expect from the prompt. I apologise for how late it it (don't binge drink, kids) but I hope this makes up for it, somehow?

**“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”  
  
― Shannon L. Alder**

 

* * *

 

**** Pepper Potts is the first person to say  _ no  _ to him after his parents die. 

She’s working in finance, still going by awful name  _ Virginia,  _ when she discovers a mistake in his math. He’s never made a mathematical mistake in his life. Yet suddenly a tornado rips through his office after her phone calls and e-mails were ignored by his assistant and slams a report on his desk, showing how is incorrect math will cost the company billions. He offers her a job as his personal assistant on the spot and she says  _ no. _

So he goes to Obie, who can pull strings, and suddenly, she’s in his house, ordering his clothes to be dry cleaned after a night of partying, and nagging him into going to meetings. 

 

 

*

 

 

One night, when he’s drunk, she helps him stumble up to bed. She strips him of his suit jacket, shoes, socks, and belt. She handles the jacket with care as she hangs it up. He watches her from the bed, his vision blurry except for the red of her hair. Even after hours spent socialising and drinking at a charity auction, it’s still set in place. Pulled back in a bun with a few perfectly styled curls loose around her ears. 

He’s struck with the urge to walk over, pull it free, watch it tumble down her back and catch fire in the amber light of his bedroom. It’s perhaps the most innocent thought he’s had about a woman since he was fourteen. He doesn’t do it, but his dreams that night are emblazoned with red.   
  
  


*

 

 

She sits with him on the anniversary of his parents' death. 

He tries to send her away. She turns up for work, and he locks himself in his workshop. He emerges three hours and a bottle of whiskey later to find she’s still there. He yells, too much like his father for his own good, but she doesn’t leave, and when the drink starts to leave his system and is replaced by remorse, she’s still there then.

It's how she becomes a part of everything. 

 

 

*

 

 

As much as he’d like to fool himself otherwise, he knows she has a life outside of him. He knows her patterns. When she’s dating someone especially. She’ll be a little cooler around him, a little less wide smiles, as though these are something to be hidden and locked away, as though her warmth isn’t for him.

And she rushes him. Not in her usual  _ follow my lead  _ way. In a  _ you’re currently my biggest inconvenience  _ way, and maybe it’s true, yet he always finds himself fighting against it. Pepper isn’t his, but he feels a surge of possessiveness that he knows she’d hate him for having. _Mine,_ his chest roars, even if it isn't true. So he fights and fights until she’s running late for whatever date she’s heading to, feeling like he’s won a small victory. The feeling always disappears when she leaves.

 

 

*

 

 

One night, a woman he brings home is full of questions about Pepper.

“So is she, like, a lesbian?” she asks while his drunk fingers are fumbling with the zipper of her dress.

“Who?”

“That lady,” she replies, a little drunk too, her words slurring, “the ginger one.”

His fingers pause on the zipper. “Pepper?”

“I don’t know her name. I just know she’s always with you, that’s what I’ve heard from all the other girls,” she says, pushing Tony’s hand away and unzipping the dress herself. “Is she your wingman?”

Tony laughs, more bitter than he'd like . “No.”

The girl shimmies out of her dress. Tony’s trousers are tight. 

“So why’s she there? What’s the point, if she’s not gonna help you?” The girl asks, kicking her heels off too and plopping herself down on his bed.

Tony doesn’t have an answer for that one. Or maybe he does, but he’s unwilling to admit it, so he keeps the truth tucked away.

“Like, she gave me the  _ weirdest  _ look earlier. I thought maybe you guys had some weird sex cult going on.”

The girl begins to reach behind her back to undo her bra. Tony joins her on the bed and stops her.

“I think you should go,” he says.

The girl’s eyebrows skyrocket up to her bangs.

“What, was I right or something?”

“Look, you’re hot, but you talk too much,” he says, with enough edge for her to get offended, gather her clothes, and flounce away.

He gathers himself after fifteen minutes, heading downstairs for water and food to sober himself up. He finds Pepper standing in the low light of the kitchen nursing martini, watching the ocean through the window. She shifts slightly, enough to glance over her shoulder at him. He pauses in the doorway. He thought she’d left.

“That was quick,” Pepper comments dryly. 

Tony heads over to the fridge and pulls out orange juice, drinking straight from the carton. Pepper’s lips curls as he does but she hides the action by taking another sip of her drink. 

“We had a,” he pauses, searching for the right word, “disagreement.”

Pepper laughs, hugging her jacket tighter around her body. “I didn’t think you’d have much time for talking.”

“You know me. Motor mouth,” he quips, joining her side to watch the ocean. “What’re you still doing here, anyway?”

“Well, I can’t drive,” Pepper says, lifting her martini slightly, “and Happy’s passed out on the couch. Tired. You’ve had the man up at all sorts of hours this weekend.” 

“Wake him up.”

“No. I’ll just stay here.” 

They go back to silence, her drinking her martini and he his orange juice. His eyes glaze over, unfocussed, and he’s no longer watching the ocean, just their reflections in the window. His shoulder grazes hers. Her hair settles on her shoulders. It occurs to him suddenly that he  _ knows,  _ if he tried, she wouldn’t say no. If he turned right now and kissed her, she wouldn’t push him away. And he  _ aches  _ for it. For the knowledge of what she tastes like, of how she sounds, the way she feels. There’s many things she’ll deny him, but that isn’t one of them.

Yet he doesn’t turn. He doesn’t kiss her. He thinks about it, yearns for it, but he doesn’t do it. He  _ needs  _ her. That’s why neither of them cross the line. He’s not enough for her; she overwhelms him. 

He pushes away from the counter and sets his OJ back in the fridge.

“Goodnight, Tony,” she calls as he leaves.

He stops in the doorway again to look at her, her silhouette against the mirror. It’s not the first time he’s wished his parents were still alive, but it still hurts all the same. He’d ask his mother -  _ how did you know you were in love? _

“Night, Pepper.”

 

 

*

 

 

He's blown up, captured, tortured, wakes up with a chest full of shrapnel and the heart of a machine. Yet still her name plays on his mind, stuck in a loop. His mantra, his prayer. 

_How did you know you were in love?_

There she is, in his dreams, smile wide and bright. He's someone different, someone she welcomes with open arms. He wakes and his eyes sting with tears. He continues work on the suit and wonders how it's fair to be so besotted with someone he can never have, he can never deserve. He wonders how it's fair on her, to keep picking up his pieces, trying to fix him. There's been nothing but sex, booze and destruction in his life, after all. That's the name he's made for himself. 

Maybe it's too late to become a better man.

He'll try like hell anyway.

 

*

  
  


He buys the ring after Afghanistan.

Happy drives him home after the press conference. Pepper heads to SI with Obie to sort out the media frenzy he’s created. She watches him worriedly as he climbs in the car, and he waits until he’s behind the tinted windows to look back at her. She’s beautiful.  _ Her eyes were red,  _ his brain reminds him.

“Hap,” he says as the drivers pulls away from the reporters’ view. “Nearest jewelry store?” 

Happy glances at him in the mirror. “Sorry?”

“Take me to it.”

Happy doesn’t pry. Tony enters the store wearing sunglasses and a cap and buys something expensive, but definitely Pepper’s taste. He hands it to Happy when he slides back in the car.

“What do you want me to do with it?” Happy asks.

“Just hold on to it. If I ever need it.”

Happy meets his eyes in the mirror. " _When_ you need it."

Tony takes a steadying breath.

"Yeah. When."


End file.
